The best and worst movies to watch on Christmas day

Dubai - A look at the best and worst of Santa movies to help you while away your Christmas day.

If there are two things that Hollywood loves at year's end, they're Xmas and awards shows. Each year brings a surge of new Xmas films and as for awards shows . There may be more awards shows than there are special Xmas episodes of TV series. That's why, from time to time, the two are combined in a special awards show for Christmas movies. Let's look at the best and worst of Santa movies to help you while away your Christmas day!
Bad Santa bags best Christmas movie from past
As you probably haven't noticed, all the great Christmas movies are from between 1946 and 1950 . or from 2003. It didn't feel like the Golden Age of Christmas Movies at the time, but it's the year that brought us Bad Santa, Elf, Love Actually, Stealing Christmas and National Lampoon's Christmas Vacation 2. Well, OK, maybe not that last one, but still, that's a heck of a year for Christmas movies. Which is the best? Well, Elf is a whimsical, funny family film, always a plus at holiday time, and features a career-making performance from Will Ferrell as a human dork raised as an elf. However, the winner is Bad Santa. Director Terry Zwigoff has a knack for affectionate portrayals of eccentric, even unpleasant outcasts, and he makes Bad Santa a treat for viewers of all ages older than 18: Rarely is any movie, let alone any Christmas movie, so laced with profanity and abuse. Billy Bob Thornton hits a career peak as a loser among losers, and the film is so biting that its warm-and-fuzzy Christmas heart comes as a delightful surprise amid gales of misanthropic laughter.
Best family flick
The big-family-gets-together-and-sorts-out-its-issues is a Christmas staplw with The Family Stone (2005) and Love the Coopers (2015) setting the bar high. An underappreciated example of this genre is It Happened on Fifth Avenue (1947), in which a millionaire's family gets tangled up in the ad-hoc family of the homeless man who spends the winter in the millionaire's mansion while the family is wintering in Florida. It's a Capra-esque triumph, and still the movie to beat in this subgenre.
Best animated Christmas movie
Well, if we don't count television movies, the choice is clear: The Nightmare Before Christmas (1993), Henry Selick's brilliant realization of Tim Burton's bizarre vision of a pumpkinhead who wants to be Santa Claus. If we include television movies, though, the award goes to ... sorry, Frosty, Rudolph and Charlie Brown ... How the Grinch Stole Christmas! (1966). From the charmingly low-tech, highly Seussian animation to Boris Karloff's delightfully hammy narration and Thurl Ravencroft booming out one of the all-time-great theme songs, it's not to be missed.

Best onscreen Christmas party
Definitely Love Actually (2003), which pulls together seemingly hundreds of different storylines and makes it all go over like gangbusters. It's packed with big stars (Colin Firth! Hugh Grant! Laura Linney! Liam Neeson! Emma Thompson!) and future big stars (Chiwetel Ejiofor! Martin Freeman! Keira Knightley! Andrew Lincoln!) and great British character actors (Rowan Atkinson! Edward Hardwicke! Bill Nighy! Alan Rickman!), and - as with any great Christmas - there's something for everyone, from laughs, tears, romance and political satire to party people, sorority girls and addled rock stars.
The best Christmas movie
It's a Wonderful Life is a stupendous film, but it's not really a Christmas movie -  it's a much bigger film, a meaning-of-life movie that happens to take place at Christmas. And Miracle on 34th Street, despite a delightful script and an impeccable performance by Edmund Gwenn, has slow stretches and flat performances from the supporting cast. But A Christmas Carol (1951), sometimes marketed as Scrooge, is a perfect encapsulation of the season, a story of redemption that mirrors the holiday's sacred origins while still being told in a secular context that speaks to anyone of any faith. If you're looking for one movie to wrap up your holiday film festival, make it A Christmas Carol.
Best Christmas-movie song ever
Some may argue for Judy Garland singing Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas in Meet Me in St. Louis, and You're a Mean One, Mr. Grinch is a charmer. But nothing beats White Christmas, sung by Bing Crosby in Holiday Inn (1942).
Best Bad Sport ?Bill Murray does an outstanding job of conveying a visceral distaste for the season as a dyspeptic TV executive in Scrooged (1988), but who can forget Lionel Barrymore as Henry Potter in It's a Wonderful Life (1946)? When George Bailey (James Stewart) hollers "Merry Christmas, Mr. Potter," Potter snaps "And a Happy New Year to you ... in jail!"
Best prop in a Christmas movie
Where would Xmas movies be without Kris Kringle's walking stick, the self-sorting card file in The Bishop's Wife (1947) and Zuzu's petals? But the Rosebud of Christmas film is surely the genuine, guaranteed-authentic Red Ryder BB Gun which is Ralphie's Holy Grail in A Christmas Story (1983). All together, now: "You'll shoot your eye out!"
Worst remake
It's a crowded field, including two remakes of It's a Wonderful Life, one of Miracle on 34th Street and a retake of Christmas in Connecticut. But the winner has to be Dr. Seuss's How the Grinch Stole Christmas (2000), an appallingly literal rethinking of the classic animated TV special that squeezes out all the magic and even subjects the Grinch to a Freudian backstory. The 2018 animated version, The Grinch, is better in every respect, and yet falls short of the low-budget original.
Least likely Santa Claus
Santa is generally depicted as short, fat, old, bespectacled and cheerful, so Tim Allen would seem to be terrible for the role. But a lot of the fun in The Santa Clause (1994) comes from seeing this unlikely chap gradually evolve into a jolly old elf under the influence of some Yuletide magic.
Worst Christmas movie song?
That would be the overpowering choral version of the same song that closes White Christmas (1954), which skips California and instead has the song sung in the snow. Talk about missing the point ...

Saddest classic
It ends on a cautious note of hope, but Billy Wilder's The Apartment (1960) has to be the saddest holiday film of all-time, with office Xmas parties, family gatherings around the tree and the rest of the seasonal cheer counterpointing a story about adultery, desperation and suicide. And yet it's a comedy!
Worst Santa role
Well, there's always Miracle on 34th Street (1947). No, not Edmund Gwenn as Kris Kringle, but Percy Helton. He's the guy who plays the intoxicated Santa. A strong candidate for worst ever. However, the winner is Robert Brian Wilson in Silent Night, Deadly Night (1984). This awful slasher movie drew pickets for its Santa-clad serial killer (Wilson), but it was most memorable for an ad depicting Santa toting an ax.